No Passing Fancy

When Matt Schaub gets a little too happy with himself for leading the NFL in 2009 with 4,770 passing yards and 396 completions, his Houston Texans teammate, wideout Andre Johnson, is there to remind him that great quarterbacks are made by receivers with blinding speed, the size to punk overmatched defensive backs and hands that could catch a hummingbird in mid-flight. Without Johnson, Schaub might as well be running the wishbone.

And when Johnson puffs up a bit too much about his league-best 1,569 receiving yards and top-ranked 22 receptions of 20 yards or more, Schaub makes sure the wideout knows he’d be nothing more than lawn furniture without a razor-sharp passer capable of delivering the ball on time and absorbing every hit delivered by slobbering defensive giants.

Peanut butter and jelly. Abbott and Costello. The Kardashians and outrageous behavior. The great pairs have symbiotic relationships that enhance each member. So it is with the Texans’ Schaub and Johnson.

“Andre and I go back and forth,” Schaub says. “He says it’s nice for me to have him. Sometimes I think it’s nice for him to have me.”

It’s great for Houston to have them both. At a time when throwing the ball is more popular than ever, Schaub and Johnson represent the march forward. Each takes full advantage of rules designed to promote the aerial attack and has honed the skills necessary to operate in complicated schemes designed to thwart mad-scientist defensive coordinators who try to inflict as much bodily harm on passers as is humanly possible. Today’s quarterbacks study longer than their predecessors did, practice more, benefit from sophisticated approaches — right down to the peewee level — and exploit mismatches against befuddled defensive backs.

It isn’t just a Houston thing. We’re talking about a league-wide phenomenon here. In 2009, an NFL-record 10 quarterbacks threw for 4,000 or more yards, three more than the previous high mark in 2007. A whopping 14 quarterbacks attempted at least 500 passes, another new standard. Five passers registered ratings of 100 or higher, the most ever, while eight completed at least 65 percent of their throws, tying the record. Just 10 years earlier, only five passers rang up four bills through the air, six tossed it 500 times and just one was accurate enough to complete 65 of 100.

“Quarterbacks like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Kurt Warner have raised the level of play at the quarterback position to where it’s never been,” Ravens offensive coordinator Cam Cameron says. “No longer is throwing the ball translating into a lot of interceptions.”

It is, in fact, leading to victories. Eight of the top-10 passing teams in 2009 made the playoffs, and two of the top four reached the Super Bowl. Only the Bengals (26th in passing offense) and Jets (31st) achieved success without a top-shelf air game. Both were among the top-10 rushing teams and had top-five defenses, but the old defense-and-ground-game adage took a hit when the Colts reached the Big Game with the league’s worst rushing attack and the eventual champion Saints were 25th in total defense.

What once seemed utterly logical — that weaker teams playing from behind would tally an abundance of passing yards while stronger teams protecting leads would pound the rock to run clock — no longer meshes with reality. Now, you either throw it a bunch or you watch somebody else win.

“I’d like to think it’s a great time to be a quarterback,” Schaub says.

We have long since moved away from the days when control-freak coaches used the forward pass only in 3rd-and-long situations. No, this is about a league that has been embracing the pass for years, but of late has gotten even more intimate with it. The idea of “setting up the pass with the run” is losing favor. Teams now use the pass to set up more passes. Increased precision has led to fewer interceptions, the opportunity for more big plays and a league-wide attitude that attacking through the air can produce quick scores that keep defenses on their heels.

“Offenses are saying, ‘We’re not afraid to throw it anymore,” Vikings offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell says. “Subtle adjustments are now made at the line of scrimmage that allow the quarterback to take the easy throw. Offensive coordinators are giving quarterbacks the opportunities to make more decisions than a few years ago.

“We give them parameters, and they have the green light to anticipate what the defense will do. They have more tools they can pull out at any time.”

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When Cameron, then the Dolphins’ head coach, watched his 11-year-old son’s first football practice, he couldn’t believe his eyes. This wasn’t the old youth version he knew, where teams ran out of full-house backfields and the passing game was a gateway to chaos.

“They came out in the shotgun with five wides,” Cameron says.

Football America loves the forward pass, and so does the NFL. It begins with the triggerman, and Cameron isn’t alone when he marvels at the caliber of quarterbacks playing today. Cardinals passing game coordinator Mike Miller considers this a “golden age” of quarterbacks. “I’ve talked to other coaches, and they think there are more great quarterbacks playing now than there have ever been,” Miller says.

Miller makes a great point. Manning, Brady and Brett Favre are sure-fire Hall of Famers. Warner has plenty of support for his candidacy. Donovan McNabb, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger and Philip Rivers all have work to do, but it’s possible to see each smiling in a yellow sports jacket in Canton down the line.

When they make their acceptance speeches, they’ll thank teammates, coaches and families. They had better also show some gratitude to the NFL, which each year seems to make it easier to throw the ball. The rule forbidding defensive contact with a receiver after five yards is nothing new, but it is being called more closely. The days of the Patriots’ corners being able to beat up Indy’s wideouts are over. “When New England was so physical with people coming off the line, five yards seemed like 10,” says ESPN analyst Tim Hasselbeck, a former NFL quarterback. “You don’t see a lot of people doing that anymore.”

There has been a rise in illegal-hands-to-the-face calls on the outside, too, something that used to be considered a normal part of the game. And once the ball is in the air, forget about it. Players such as Arizona’s 6'3", 217-pound Larry Fitzgerald have built-in size advantages against most cornerbacks. Outlawing contact while he tries to catch the ball makes him practically infallible. “The league does a good job policing things downfield,” Miller says. “If a guy has earned his space on a pattern, he gets a chance to go after the ball.”

Keeping quarterbacks clean helps — a lot. Their ability to ground the ball once they’re out of the pocket and the rule that prevents prone defenders from hitting them low while on the ground have given them a heightened sense of security. If quarterbacks believe they are safe and aren’t “seeing ghosts,” as Schaub puts it, they can be highly successful. “A million (quarterbacks) can execute well if they’re not getting hit,” Cameron says.

That’s not to say the NFL has put a force field around them that repels defenders — yet. Anybody who watched the NFC title game saw the results of New Orleans’ persistent pounding of Favre. His late interception wasn’t directly related to the beating administered by Saints defenders, but he couldn’t have been too excited about running on that decisive third down play with a mangled ankle. “It finally took its toll,” Cameron says.

Until quarterbacks are allowed to work without fear of being hit at all — and some defensive types complain that might be on the horizon — it’s important for coordinators to make it easier for them to get rid of the ball quickly and safely. One way is to employ a variety of quick, short passes, often thrown out to receivers who have taken a fast step back following the snap. After the catch, they attack corners one-on-one. “There are more high-percentage passes thrown,” Miller says. “Guys can execute them, get the sticks moving and get the quarterback some confidence.”

The gimmes help completion percentages soar, too. The traditional West Coast scheme used quick throws to backs in lieu of running plays. Now, teams are getting balls out wide to big-play specialists who could be one broken tackle away from six points. That’s one of the reasons Schaub and the Texans are so lucky to have Johnson, who can “take a three-yard hitch, break a tackle and take it to the house,” Schaub says.

“The passing game has really changed, especially in the short, quick passes and quick screens,” Eagles offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg says. “If you get the ball out faster, it counters the blitz.”

Cameron refers to those passes as “long handoffs,” and they often accomplish the same thing as giving the ball to a running back, but with a couple of added benefits. First, they spread the field and force the defense to cover more ground. They also have the big-play component because a broken tackle in space could lead to a 25-yard gain, while a runner who slips a defender in the box usually finds another tackler waiting for him.

Sometimes, a quarterback will head to the line with a running play called as well as a default short pass. If he sees a receiver with soft coverage on the outside, he can flip the ball to him without even calling an audible. It’s a straight sight read by the quarterback and wideout. “If it looks good for us, we’ll get the ball out to the playmaker in space, rather than mash it up inside,” Schaub says. When Hasselbeck was a backup with the Cardinals, he says any time they advanced the ball inside an opponent’s 10-yard line, they looked for one-on-one coverage against Fitzgerald and went right to him. “The quarterback would take one step, throw it up to him and let him go get it,” Hasselbeck says.

As playmakers such as Fitzgerald keep pouring into the league, passing attacks everywhere benefit. The explosion of spread offenses throughout the college, high school and Pop Warner ranks may not be doing a lot for quarterbacks, but it’s creating a glut of talented wide receivers. “There is a ton of terrific athletes coming out of college now, and they’re almost all receivers,” Bengals defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer says. “The lesser athletes in college are playing cornerback.” In the 1970s and ’80s, colleges rarely went with three wideouts. Now, they’re using five, all of whom can run and make plays in space. College programs are keenly aware of the financial value of scoring points and entertaining fans, so the offenses are winning meeting-room battles for “either/or”-style athletes who arrive on campus as freshmen.

“We’re seeing better athletes on offense in college than on defense,” Cameron says. “More basketball-type guys see football as another option. Twenty-five or 30 years ago, a football guy and a basketball guy were two different athletes.”

That skill imbalance on the two sides of the ball graduates to the NFL, where teams can throw out five wideouts and then look for the mismatch. “If I can get your fifth or sixth defensive back on the field, I like my fourth receiver against him,” Miller says. “That’s a good matchup for me.” Further complicating matters is the specialization of the receivers. Most of the league’s better teams have a variety of targets with which defenses must contend. Look at the Vikings. Bernard Berrian is the speed guy. Sidney Rice is the tall, go-get-it type. Percy Harvin is dangerous in space from the slot. “We have all different kinds of receivers,” Bevell says.

The goal is to create as many advantages as possible. If Schaub can’t get it to Johnson, he has Kevin Walter underneath. Or tight end Owen Daniels up the middle of the coverage. That versatility allows coordinators to come up with more sophisticated collections of patterns. “When you have (receivers) who can specialize, it makes the game plan easier to create because you can then dress things up with formations and motions,” Schaub says.

Ultimately, the depth, talent and diversity of receiving units make passing offenses far more difficult for defenses to control. For years, fans and media criticized the Eagles because they wouldn’t give McNabb talented skill people, aside from Brian Westbrook and the Terrell Owens debacle. Coach Andy Reid believed his scheme would prevail. During the last two seasons, however, that philosophy changed as the Eagles added big-play wideout DeSean Jackson, receiver Jeremy Maclin, versatile fullback Leonard Weaver and halfback LeSean McCoy. Reid’s moves prove that no matter how sound a gameplan might be — on either side of the ball — opponents can figure it out quickly and adjust. The chess game goes on for 60 minutes, but more important is how well teams exploit personnel advantages.

“Your scheme only holds up for about a quarter,” Cameron says. “Everybody in the league sees everybody’s tape. Good ideas are easy to come by. The matchup is the matchup.

“A guy in the NBA who is 7 feet tall is 7 feet tall all night. In the NFL, Randy Moss and Larry Fitzgerald are mismatches all day long.”

Zimmer always knew things had changed in the NFL, but a trip to Miami for the most recent Super Bowl convinced him that the Old Way was gone.

“I was telling our coaches that the other day,” he says. “I watched the quarterbacks at the Super Bowl and realized that (the NFL) used to be run the ball and stop the run. Now, you throw to set up the run. You have to stop the pass. Some defenses even want opponents to run the ball. They force them to do it.”

That might be exactly what Rex Ryan wants to hear, but it’s hard to convince the rest of the league that gaining real estate yard by bloody yard is the way to go. That’s why Zimmer and his defensive coordinator buddies are spending more and more time coming up with ways to disrupt the passing game. If you ask Zimmer, there are three ways to do that.

The first is hitting the quarterback. “Until we get some quarterbacks hurt, they’re going to keep throwing,” Zimmer says. The second is dropping more people into coverage than are out in patterns. That forces the quarterback to hold the ball, make bad decisions and ultimately get hit. The final method is mixing up blitz and coverage looks, hoping to create confusion that leads to — you guessed it — a kill shot on the passer. This might sound redundant, but there isn’t a defensive coach in the NFL who doesn’t believe the way to slow down enemy attacks is by rocking the pocket. Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams made headlines in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl by saying his players would deliver some “remember-me” hits to Peyton Manning. Some people were appalled. Those in the league simply nodded in agreement.

“That’s always the defense’s goal,” Schaub says. “They want to get to the quarterback. They want to knock us down and knock us around. They want to get into our heads that we have to get rid of the ball a split second earlier than we want. We know we’re going to get hit. We just have to deal with it.”

Defensive coaches now bring pressure on first and second downs, which used to be all about stopping the run. They want to force third-and-long, which gives them the advantage. “Offenses will win most of the 3rd-and-2s,” Bevell says. But it’s tough to turn up the heat when contending with an ever-increasing number of personnel groupings deployed by offenses, which can line up varying numbers of receivers, tight ends and backs in all kinds of formations. Trying to keep up can be difficult for defenses, which will often find themselves at a disadvantage against a certain package of skill players. “(Offenses) do a better job substituting than we do,” Zimmer admits.

No matter who is on the field, offensive coaches had better have strong protection options available, the better to allow decisive strikes without exposing their quarterbacks to bodily harm. It starts with basic protection against a four-man rush. If you can’t do that, you’re cooked, because the more players you must keep in to help you win a five-against-four battle, the less effective you’ll be. But the NFL has become more of a blitzing league than ever before, so the concept of thriving in an environment of extreme uncertainty and physical danger has grown as well.

It used to be that beating the blitz was all about the “hot read.” Here comes the linebacker, so throw it to the back on a quick flair or use a fast-developing screen. You gain five yards, and the quarterback doesn’t end up on the organ transplant waiting list. Things have changed, in part because of fire zones that drop linemen into coverage to thwart the easy solutions. Offenses still use the quick fix, but they’re more interested in getting the ball downfield, no matter how many marauding defenders are at the gates.

“More people have gone to picking the blitz up, keeping the quarterback clean and then attacking one-on-one matchups on the outside,” Mornhinweg says.

Mornhinweg has the perfect weapon for that game in Jackson, the speedy third-year wideout who led the NFL with 18.6 yards per catch and 10 receptions of 40 or more yards last season. Isolating him on a cornerback, even if that means keeping everybody else in to block, can create a huge advantage for the offense. It doesn’t always hit, but when it does, the scoreboard usually changes.

That’s the goal, of course — scoring points quickly. The days of clock control and 15-play drives went out with hair bands and Jazzercise. In some ways, it’s a throwback to the West Coast adage that you throw the ball early to get a lead and then hold on. These days, though, you have to throw to get the lead and throw some more to protect it. And sometimes you have to throw to get it back. “So many people are passing the ball well that a 10-to-14-point lead at halftime is not that safe anymore,” Mornhinweg says.

That’s why Schaub is so happy to have Johnson. And Johnson needs Schaub.

And defenses need help.